This Is an Outrage!

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If you're like me, you always walk away from Michael Moore films infuriated by the injustices that he's exposed and screaming, "This is an outrage!" However, the piles of convincing evidence that he presents to you to prove his points don't really go beyond inspiring righteous indignation—that is, you're pissed, but you don't really know what you're supposed to do about it.

After I saw The Cove, I knew I should tell people not to support marine animal parks or swim with dolphins. After I saw Food Inc., I knew I should start cutting high fructose corn syrup out of my diet. After I saw Terminator 2, I knew I should never buy a robot because machines will eventually try to kill us.

After I saw Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore's new unashamedly liberal (as usual) documentary that traces the roots of our current financial crisis and basically announces that "the center cannot hold," I left the theater in the same state that I was in after all of Moore's previous movies: paralysis.

So I said to myself, "Self, I will do one thing that shows that I took something—anything—away from this movie." So I decided to pull my money out of Bank of America and open up a checking and savings account at a credit union. Okay. So maybe this act is symbolic at best, but, if you don't spoon-feed me solutions, I ain't gonna do jack shit.

Anyway, Capitalism: A Love Story is highly informative, fiercely opinionated, wickedly funny, and sometimes moving. One of the film's story threads—how laid-off Chicago factory workers took a stand against Bank of America, which tried to deny them their final paychecks and severance—is an inspirational power-of-the-people tale that makes up for the movie's saggy bits (it runs two hours) and seemingly sloppy structure (it wasn't always clear to me why one particular scene followed another).

This is an outrage! But I keep going to Michael Moore movies anyway. Maybe I like being outraged?

Here's the trailer. Watch:

One thing I do know for sure is that I now have a deep appreciation for Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, whose honest and forceful interview answers in the movie are almost as impressive as her impassioned message to her constituents earlier this year—she told people whose homes had been foreclosed to stay right where they were and "be squatters in your own homes." Her bit starts at the 1:00 mark. Watch: